FSFE and the antitrust case against Microsoft

Europe's most important antitrust action in the software field
was the European Commission's case against Microsoft, running
from 2004 to 2007. FSFE participated as a
third party, providing expert input on Free Software,
interoperability and competition. We worked closely with the
Samba team, which develops a Free Software alternative to
Microsoft's proprietary workgroup server.

The European Commission imposed a record fine of EUR 497 million on
Microsoft. In 2012, the European Court of Justice ruled that
Microsoft would have to pay another EUR 860 million for failing
to comply with the Commission's decision.

FSFE represented developers' interests

FSFE played two key roles in this case. We represented
the interests of Free Software developers. In our
official role as Intervener, we persuaded the European
Commission to reject any royalty requirements that
would be incompatible with Free Software. We also
argued constantly for the publication of useful
technical documentation and against lock-out of Free
Software based on arbitrary manipulations of formats
and standards.

FSFE's most important achievement was to make sure that Free
Software developers could actually use the interoperability
information which Microsoft was forced to release to build
competing products.

Incorruptible

FSFE was one of only two public interest organisation which
Microsoft could not buy off. The case began with many
companies giving testimony of Microsoft's breaches of
antitrust regulation, but one by one these companies
made deals with Microsoft and withdrew from the
case. FSFE and SIIA were the only two organisations
that pursued this case from start to finish. We were
later joined by ECIS, who did extraordinary
work. Without this sustained support, the Commission
would probably not pursued the case as decisively as
it did.

Getting interoperability information

At the heart of this case was that the European
Commission would require Microsoft to publish
interoperability information. This type of information
is necessary for non-Microsoft software, such as Samba
running on GNU/Linux, to communicate and function
fully within existing client-server Microsoft
networks. The interoperability information was not
secret because it was valuable. It was valuable only
because it was secret.

Ruling confirmed at all levels

Supported by the persistent work by Carlo Piana,
Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison, Volker Lendecke,
Georg Greve and other people acting on FSFE and
Samba's behalf, the Commission's decision that
Microsoft had breached competition rules was upheld at
the highest level.

Interoperable applications now possible

Information has now been published and is being used
by the developers of Samba and many other projects to
improve network interoperability for Free Software
applications. This facilitates migration to Free
Software. The court rulings have also set important
precedents as to what business practices are
considered acceptable.